Monster
by Stealth Dragon
Summary: I beheld the wretch – the miserable monster whom I had created Frankenstein, Mary Shelley. Sheppard and McKay friendship. Gen. Warning: rather dark, major Shep whump.


Monster

by

Stealth Dragon

Rated: PG-13 for violence, torture, dark themes, language

Characters: Sheppard, McKay

Summary: _I beheld the wretch – the miserable monster whom I had created_ - Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

A/N: Written for the 2008 Spook Me ficathon over yonder on LJ

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John Sheppard had a dog, once; long ago when he was ten. A husky named Cody, staring back at him at that very moment on the other side of a cesspool puddle too dark to be water. Maybe oil, maybe blood, or maybe it really was water colored by the prevalent darkness that made the sick lights overhead pointless. Storm gray cement blocks formed the corridors, striated in rust and slick with mold and moisture. There was standing water everywhere. Sometimes, when you looked into them long enough, you saw things.

Like Cody, chasing through a field, spooking birds in an explosion of feathers. Ten year old John followed, both without a care in the world and not a single thought for the future. Just him and his best bud.

John missed those days so bad it hurt.

"Was it not necessary?" The voice, female, hovered somewhere behind John, making the skin over his spine prickle. He refused to look at her; he stood and moved on without even so much as a glance over his shoulder no matter how loud his brain screamed.

_Don't turn your back.._.

John passed another dark stain and Cody limping from the woods, bloodstained and matted. He'd run too far, beyond the forest, beyond John's calls. The dog had taken on something and the something had won; dad assumed a bear or mountain lion, mom a car. Whatever it had been, it made Cody not Cody. John ran to him just in time to catch Cody as he fell only to have Cody nip at him.

"Was it not necessary? The creature was in pain. It was not meant to be saved."

Cody was carried away by the vet to be operated on. They'd tried, the vet said. They'd tried everything.

"It wasn't the only option," John said.

"In the end, yes it was."

John was allowed to say good-bye before the end. Skinny arms wrapped around a thick neck, and John remembered how Cody whined in his ear. His mom had said it was Cody's way of saying goodbye, but John silently begged to differ, even years later in his adult skin. He could have sworn Cody was begging to live.

"Life's too important not to try other options, first," John said. His lip twitched fighting back a sneer that wouldn't mean a damn thing to the woman behind him. Nothing he said, nothing he did, meant anything, did anything, but that never stopped him from trying. He was stubborn that way.

It was also all he had going for him right now – like throwing a temper tantrum but, hey, at least it made him feel better.

The next puddle and there was no Cody. There was Sumner, withered, dying and about to say what would doom them all. The muscles in John's back hardened and his heart tripped over painful beats.

"Was his life not important enough for options?"

John's throat grew thick. "I had no choice."

"Did you not just speak of life being far too important not to try other op-"

"It's not that simple!" His voice skittered like a runaway dog down the shadow-thick halls. "There were no options because Sumner was already dead, just like Cody. Because I didn't get there in time to save them... him." John closed his eyes, feeling those eight-hundred years spent sleeping in a stasis chamber. Taking a deep breath that made his chest ache, he forced composure and continued. "Options become limited. Sometimes there are no options. Doesn't mean you shouldn't look for them."

"I have, John. I have explored many options."

Cold brushed over John like a long sigh, making him shiver. _Don't look up, don't look up, don't look up..._

"But you..." said the voice, in front of him now. _Don't look up_ his mind whispered. But fear was louder, and he looked up into sunken, solid black eyes and a colorless face of bony angles and deep planes framed by tangled wet hair blacker than pitch.

"You," she said, emotionless as something dead, "You are my final solution." She plunged her rusty knife into his chest, slicing through bone like butter and into the fragile flesh of his thrashing heart. It hurt, like ice and fire and Wraith feedings, all too much to let him scream.

Darkness smothered his sight, but the pain stayed.

--------------------------------

When it wasn't being eaten by a giant whale, Rodney's nightmares were walking into a public place, buck-naked – usually a classroom, with a one-hundred page test plus essay full of gibberish that was a matter of life or death. Sometimes he preferred being eaten by the whale.

He was in that dream now; awake and with clothes on, yes, yet still feeling more naked than he ever had and pining for that whale. The ruse had worked, the Genii uniform and Genii information coupled with his own vast knowledge had bought him entrance into the biggest brainiac party of a life-time. It was a plethora of who's who among Pegasus Galaxy geniuses from various worlds, plus less intelligent but still more prestigious guests because – and no offense to the Pegasus Galaxy – it wasn't as though the living conditions were ideal for growing great minds. Rodney had overheard more than one conversation from more than one "scientist" dressed in Medieval robes on subjects that sounded like little more than alchemy.

Among these people, Rodney could actually say he was a god. Or, more appropriately in lieu of the local belief system, an Ancestor.

They all sat at a great dining table of liquid dark wood, in an amphitheater of a dining room that made the gate room feel like a closet. Everything was red carpets in gold embroidery, marble floors, grand paintings and all the other pointless trappings of the rich and famous, pushing into everyone's face just how rich and famous the host was. But Rodney hadn't missed the frayed edges of those carpets, nor the chips in the floor, cracks in the ceilings and more cracks in the grand paintings.

With the mansion being located out in a swamp, it all smacked a little too much of _The Fall of the House of Usher. _He couldn't stop waiting for the place to crumble down around his ears. Most of the time, however, he was distracted by his continuing litany of _I'm Genii, I'm Genii, I'm Genii_, which he was certain everyone could see right through. They were just biding their time until they had him in a position where they could do something about it, something nasty and vicious and painful...

"Dr. McKay."

Rodney jumped, then leaned forward, as did everyone else to look at their host seated primly at the head of the table, sipping from a crystal goblet. Feresa Jaseen (Feresa being something like Lady or Dame or some other king-appointed title) was slender and gray but not so gray that she didn't strike Rodney as having once been hot, possibly blond. The hair might have been silver, but the woman had beauty secrets that kept her looking a spry late thirties in her oval face and sky-blue eyes. She smiled perfect teeth, making Rodney's heart do a little jig – not because he still thought her slightly attractive (she definitely had to have been blond at one time, he could feel it). Jaseen was the who's who's who of brainiacs in the Pegasus galaxy: a former Traveler having taken an early retirement in a stinking swamp – a stinking swamp with a mansion and kick-ass Ancient weapon that would make Ronon and Shep –

_Damn it, Sheppard_ and all the trigger-happy grunts drool idiotically. A broken weapon, unfortunately, and she only wanted the best of the best to help her fix it.

There was only one teeny-tiny wrench in the gears of joy, discovered in a smaller and more timid rumor peeling back a layer of the woman's visual presence, baring what "might be" underneath. The locals were nervous – about the weapon, the woman, and continuing unrest with neighboring locals situated near Jaseen's palace of a laboratory. They'd talked with Teyla during a trade mission about Jaseen being seen in the company of the enemy locals, and of people vanishing in the night, never to be seen again: people with Ancestor blood, who could work the farming machines left by the Ancestors for the people's use. And it hadn't started until after Jaseen's arrival.

Atlantis was more interested in the rumor of Jaseen: possible mad scientist? What the Travelers had to say about her painted a rather grim picture. The thing about geniuses was that personality quirks didn't matter as long as they served the greater good... without crossing lines. Jaseen's idea of serving the greater good had supposedly crossed lines. Weapons – still all fine and good, but the Travelers hadn't approved of her wanting to create a bomb to rid a planet of inhabitants and empty it for the taking; not Wraith, innocent people.

Apparently, she didn't like space travel all that much.

Jaseen's biography didn't end there. She liked bartering with weapons to get the best of the best, had been doing so for years (made sense; how else get a nifty space-age blasters out there for a certain Satedan to come across?) She preferred progress over survival. And she had a thing for people who could light up Ancient tech, bordering on an obsession that gave the Travelers good reason to suspect her entourage made-up mostly of purchased humans. The Travelers let Atlantis in on these facts because they didn't trust her and could use an ally against her.

And because somewhere out there, someone had taken John Sheppard. Atlantis had found that someone, who'd sold him to someone else, who'd sold him to someone else who couldn't be found and this was the only possible, hairs-breadth of a lead they had left.

Oh, and there was some mild interest in this weapon, mostly the IOA's interest. Okay, so Rodney harbored a seed of interest, which might become more should he find Sheppard alive and well. Alive and not well, or not here at all, then he wouldn't give a rat's ass.

So without any hard evidence, Rodney had no real reason to dislike this woman. She hadn't blown up this planet just to take it, and genius minds always made lesser minds nervous (and, really, who was Rodney to judge? He'd built is own _inactive_ nuclear reactor all in the name of getting a blue ribbon... which... he didn't get). So he couldn't help a small flush of pride when she asked, "Is it true that you are an exceptional translator of Ancestor language and Ancestor machines?"

"I've been known to dabble in it, here and there," he said, smiling smug.

Jaseen pulled a small device from her pocket and passed it down the line of seated guests to McKay. "Please, demonstrate to us the extent of this _dabbling_."

The device looked like an LSD, but was more like an Ancient version of a Blackberry when McKay activated it. Ancient scrolled up with a touch screen key-pad at the bottom. McKay didn't know every word, but he didn't need to, recognizing several names as well as his own.

"It's your guest list," he said, passing it back to Jaseen. "Just above tonight's menu." The screen went blank when he handed it over.

The demonstration had many of the so-called scientists and most of the non-brainiacs bug-eyed and slack jawed. Several started muttering under their breaths, tones dark and lips curved in a severe frown. A few looked ready to faint.

A bearded man in a monk's robe shouted, red-faced with indignation, "The possessions of the Ancestors should not be used so lightly! You should know better, Feresa!"

Jaseen ignored him. "Most excellent, Dr. McKay. Many of you will be undergoing similar tests, for it takes more than high intelligence to work for me. It also takes an enlightened mind. So, if you are finished with your meal, we shall proceed." A skinny, skittish male servant in black scurried over to his mistress and handed her a single sheet of paper that she immediately passed around. "Those who's names are on the list need not follow."

When it reached the bearded monk, he frowned, muttered and slumped with a stubborn crossing of his arms. McKay fought back another smug smirk on seeing his own name. He felt suddenly bolstered - _I'm actually pulling this off_ - and not unlike a Canadian James Bond.

------------------------------

John tugged the hem of the white hospital gown in futility around his feet. It was ankle-length, like a nightgown stained in old blood. But with his knees drawn up it always slipped out from under his toes. Which meant having to pull his arms out from the warm press of his legs and chest to tug it back into place. His toes were turning blue, his fingertips, and his teeth clacked fast as a cicada shrill. John was cold, always so damn cold, his heart a sluggish fist beating a torpid tattoo on his ribs.

The three-foot wide canal of night-black fluid gave a languid gurgle, then stilled. The same three feet of space was all John had to sit on, then there was the canal, another three feet of dark concrete, another canal, then darkness hiding whatever came after. All John had to do was step over the liquid that definitely wasn't water and find a warmer spot.

Except there was no warm spot – there was never a warm spot – so he didn't see the point. At least here, he had a nice little corner to pack into. And like hell he was stepping over that dark crap burbling every two minutes.

The liquid belched. It settled into a hazy image of a Wraith being pinned to a table by John and Ronon.

"The one you call Micheal," she said from... somewhere, anywhere. Her flat whisper oozed down John's spine like oil. "You consider his creation a grievous mistake. Was it not necessary in order to test the retro-virus? Was it not inevitable? Were there no other options?"

The liquid belched, the image shimmered and shifted. Micheal, human, congenial and easy going. Micheal, human, gaping in horror over the knowledge of what he really was and how he came to be.

"We could have told him the truth," John said feebly. He'd always wondered – they'd all always wondered – if telling Micheal the truth would have made a difference. If giving him a choice...

A choice to live as a human or die as a Wraith. Sheppard more than once had wandered in on Beckett, still in his office, debating to himself between glass after glass of Scotch. They'd spared Micheal the truth in the hopes of sparing him: pain or death, Sheppard couldn't remember. They'd caused him pain anyway, and made an enemy a hell of a lot more wicked-vicious than the Wraith. It was all about survival for most of this galaxy. Micheal talked a big game about just trying to survive, but down in that maze of tunnels and monsters, when John had been ready to shoot, Micheal had opened his arms in welcome. The bastard didn't care if he lived or died – if the entire galaxy lived or died. You can't get any more formidable than that.

So they all wondered to this day what being honest from the start would have accomplished. Maybe hasten the inevitable, maybe spared them and this galaxy a hell of a lot of pointless agony.

"You had to test your weapon," she said.

"A weapon that didn't do a damn thing except help us live a little longer," John snapped.

"Is that not the purpose of a weapon?"

John squeezed his eyes shut against the image of himself aiming at Micheal, and Micheal ready to receive the bullet with open arms. So close, so damn friggin' close. "It was a mistake -"

"It was inevitable. You had a weapon in need of testing. You had a way to use that weapon. It did not work because it did not work. That is the way of new things. They will work, or they will not. When they do not, you move on. The consequences mean nothing as long as the goal is eventually achieved."

The image shimmered. Micheal's hybrids on a hive ship. Micheal's hybrid's human again. A healed Kanaan holding his son and smiling.

"A goal was achieved."

"At a price," John whispered, because people had died and Micheal was still out there with a galaxy of humans to bend to his will – literally.

"That is where we differ, John."

A bony hand shot out from the liquid in an explosion of syrupy red, latching around his ankle and pulling him in. John flipped onto his chest scrabbling madly at the wet concrete until his fingernails tore and fingertips bled. But there was no purchase, no space to struggle. He was pulled in piece at a time: legs, waist, chest....

"Consequences do not rule me. Only the goal matters, John."

Up to his neck.

"Only the goal."

Over his head. It pushed into his mouth, into his lungs, his blood, his bones, his very being. Again came the dark, yet his lungs still burned.

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Jaseen moved them from room to room, each holding the unexpected surprise of either everyday non-Ancient devices Rodney could have put together when he was ten, Ancient devices, and gutted consoles spilling frayed wires from bent panels. The first room had been plain, white marbled pillars and marble floors – a Greek god temple littered with junk that was one man's trash but a scientist's treasure. All of it was mundane, the kind of crap even three-year-olds back on earth owned; Rodney was pretty sure the box he'd just pieced together and spruced up to be a Pegasus version of a movie projector. He was right when he flipped it on and a black and white little girl in a dress danced across a black and white field of flowers.

Three so-called scientists were dismissed, a fourth when his device exploded just as the competition ended and the group moved on.

The next room was a gaudy yellow with sun-bright curtains and vases of sunny flowers like lilies that smelled of honeysuckle. Here a cornucopia of rusty and dismembered Ancient tech lay scattered across tables covered in gold cloth. The other contestants, as expected, jumped right in attempting to fit slot A into the wrong slot B. But not Rodney. One look at all those bits and pieces and he knew most of the attempts were going to be futile. This junk was little more than that – junk, like pieces of pottery those archaeologists dig up: great for the archaeologists but a let down for artists longing to see what the finished product would have been.

Rodney wandered past table after table, the bored expression on his face hiding the massive disappointment. Some of this crap looked promising. Then his gaze was pulled straight to something overwhelmingly familiar. He picked up the dead LSD that wouldn't have lit up even if Sheppard had been the one holding it.

_Sheppard._

Rodney removed the back and attached the small clamps from his tablet. The diagnostic lasted only a minute; all that was needed was a new wire, and that was something Rodney always made sure to carry plenty of. He replaced said wire, the LSD glowed, and he raised it up as instructed by Jaseen standing in the back for her to see.

Eight were dismissed, leaving fifteen.

The next room was deep cobalts and midnight blues – flowers, curtains and shimmering cloth covering the butchered consoles. All of it was Ancient and all of it child's play for Rodney. Not at first – not even Rodney could be a miracle worker at the snap of a finger – there was no saving the long range sensor console. The second turned out to be a charm, but not much of one since according to the diagnostic, the machine had formerly been sewage control. Rodney knew he should just be happy that he got the thing to work but, seriously, _sewage control_? A monkey could have put the stupid thing together and run it afterwards, in it's sleep.

Six more were dismissed.

Room number four was various shades of violets and more dismembered junk. The name of the game was reverse engineering and forcing compatibility between Ancient and regular tech. The task took longer, long enough for food to be brought in. The task was also doable but no cake-walk, and for the first time since this little game began, Rodney ended up finishing last. Some Traveler finished first.

But he finished, his device worked (he'd gone simple, creating a radiation detector anyone could use) and that's all that mattered – not that it helped against the internal pouting. Rodney was supposed to be smarter than these people, for crying out loud.

Now there were three; ushered into the final room with its gray marble and black curtains and, damn it, Rodney had it wrong – this wasn't _Fall of the House of Usher_, it was _Masque of the Red Death_ and his heart did a frightened little skip half expecting to see a man in a black cloak waiting to kill them all.

Or more appropriately, just him. He wasn't feeling quite so James Bond anymore.

No executioner, though. No death laughing as it pointed a bony finger and said the jig is up, Dr. McKay, and you shall die now. Instead they were seated in plush chairs with black padding. The curtains were pulled aside to reveal a blank white wall, the lights were turned low and a projector hummed to life somewhere overhead. Ridiculous fear forgotten, Rodney settled in for the show.

The footage Rodney was looking at was in color but grainy, old, most likely having had sound at one time according to the moving lips of the old guy in the white robes, but not any more. The guy was Ancient, Rodney could tell by those robes. The old man spoke for a while, then the image flickered to a large octagonal box of dark metal crowned by a flashing red light being pushed on a wheeled platform from the back of a puddle jumper into the center of a forest. The scene changed to another box wheeled into a cave, another dropped into an ocean, and another pushed through the 'gate. The scene changed again, back to the old man, then to a panoramic view of a heavily forested valley.

A great beam of searing blue and white light burst like a spear from the center of this valley, up beyond the clouds then branching out in various directions. The abruptness actually made Rodney jump. Then the scene changed – the woods, the cave, beneath the water, on the other side of the 'gate and scorched earth where heavy metal boxes had once been. The old man spoke, the scene changed to boxes floating in space and the same beam branching to destroy those with the red lights but not those with the blue lights. It left nothing behind, not even debris.

The movie ended and the curtains closed. Jaseen stood before her meager audience.

"We call it the _Vian Dueth_: the thinking knife." She smiled with a wry twist. "Though most prefer the more simple term of 'smart gun.' I discovered its location after translating Ancestor writing during my study of an Ancestor warship obtained by my people."

Rodney fought back the need to shift uncomfortably. If their timing hadn't sucked so monumentally, that ship just might have been theirs... so long as Sheppard hadn't been in a noble mood. At least they'd gotten Sheppard ba-

The need to shift won out, but Rodney managed to keep it imperceptible.

"We believe this weapon to be the reason why this planet is avoided by the Wraith. After discovering it's location, we managed to get it to work during a test run, targeting space debris released by my ship but not the ship itself. We have not been able to get it to work since except in bursts over short distances. We discovered that the weapon needs time to recharge. However, the majority of the weapon's connection with it's power source has been corrupted, as has most of its systems. We do not have the resources for a full repair so we have been grafting technology in order to bridge the gaps. That is where you, my fellow technicians, come in. We need more able minds to repair the damage. It will be a long process, one in which you will be well compensated for. Should your efforts help to bring this glorious weapon back to life, the compendium of knowledge I and my people have gathered on Ancestor technology will be yours to peruse, along with pay and the ability to stay on and study the weapon further if you wish.

"But I should warn you. Should you choose to accept this offer, you must stay on until the weapon's completion. This may take days, months, years – possibly a lifetime. If you are not willing to make the sacrifice, then I ask you to please leave."

When no one moved. Jaseen smiled. "Then let us continue, my friends."

Rodney shoved his hands into his pockets when he stood, fingering the small box of "direly needed medication" that rattled with sugar pills. Cold sweat rolled down his back, creating an itch he couldn't scratch.

---------------------------

John stared at himself staring at the cold 'gate that Elizabeth – not Elizabeth.... maybe Elizabeth – had stepped through into her very own frozen hell. The image wavered and flickered, like an old movie, on a partition of glass and warped, moist, weeping wood. He was packed again in a little corner, between partition and wall, away from the dark and the puddles that couldn't be puddles, though the cold water dripping on the back of his neck sure as hell felt like water.

"She did what was necessary," she said. "Because there were no other options."

John gritted his teeth and said nothing. He was still cold, and with it was an ever growing pain. It had started as a mild ache in his joints, like the flu. Now every time he moved or breathed, it was like broken glass where joints and cartilage used to be. He hurt, literally, down to his bones; probably in part thanks to his perpetual huddles, but he'd no intention of unfolding himself because it hurt that damn much.

The image on the partition shivered, blurred then coalesced into Wallace shedding tears over the pictures of a little family he'd almost destroyed. Wallace with a Wraith hand on his chest, screaming as he aged, screaming even has he dried up to skin and bones. John watched, just like last time, ignoring the pleading of his brain to do his psyche a favor and look away. Just look away – this wasn't meant to be seen again, so there would be no harm in it. Look. Away. _Now_.

John did, only to see the same image in a puddle no bigger than both hands. He swallowed again against a persistent stream of bile.

"I do not fathom your logic. One man dies for another, and you are the catalyst. This death was a necessity – one life for another and another. One life for many. For a galaxy."

The image shivered, changed. Replicators poured from caricatures of Ancient ships onto a planet. A planet breaking apart as the replicator mass sank into the ground.

John gripped his knees until the tendons protruded sharply from his hands. "I gave him a choice, you bitch. I..." used a man's guilt against him, used it to talk him into dying. He'd never even asked Wallace straight forward to do this. He'd presented - _manipulated_... no, no _presented_ - a situation, and Wallace took it. He gave a man the chance to redeem himself. _He'd talked him into dying so Sheppard wouldn't have to watch Rodney die._

"Look, John."

John lowered his head to his knees.

"I said look!"

Bony fingers tangled into his hair, yanking his head up so sudden and so hard his neck twinged and skull cracked against the wall. The partition was filled wall to ceiling and left to right with space, space infested with thousands of hive ships, then worlds being culled, humans drained to nothing – men, women, even children.

"Do you not see, John? One life for another. One life for many. Your life for theirs."

And that almost had him. For four heartbeats and the visions of culls packing his brain, he nearly caved. But he knew better. He knew. He'd met the woman behind the curtain and what she hid there, and it sure as hell had nothing to do with a life for a life.

The second hand slammed into his chest, over his heart and pushed, and pushed, and pushed. Fingers hard as metal pierced flesh, muscle and bone; slipped between the ribs, around the heart. They squeezed.

"Is this your reasoning?" she said, calm and neutral as an automated voice. "Is this what decides life and death?" John's heart thrashed in her hand, a panicked animal in a shrinking cage, soft and fragile as wet clay. She squeezed, turning thrashing into futile twitching. "Is this what gives you the right to survive? What of my right, John? I have a heart, too. It is merely not as... soft. Oh..."

The hand stilled but never left his chest. "It is time."

Ice pierced John's upper back all the way to his spine, through his spine, severing nerve endings from his brain. The brain sent signals to move, run, tear the ice from his back. His limbs responded with twitches and jerks.

The world went back to black, his heart still in the cold palm of her hand.

--------------------------------

Jaseen wasn't a woman who liked to waste time, it seemed. A quick breakfast back in the near-empty and echoing dining hall (Rodney hadn't realized they'd been at this all night), then it was off to another room, probably orange, maybe green. She led them through corridor after corridor, down a flight of stairs, into a sitting room and through a hidden door behind a pointlessly (well, obviously not so pointless) gigantic fireplace.

No oranges or greens; she took them down a medieval winding staircase lit by burning torches in blackened sconces, and suddenly all Rodney could think about was _The Cask of Amontillado_ and being buried alive behind a brick wall. He had a sudden urge to breathe fresh air and stare into wide open skies. But before the desire had a chance to grab him by the throat and hurl him back the way they had come, they stepped through a heavy wood door into a grand torture chamber turned Frankenstein's lab – if Frankenstein had been into splicing machines together rather than human parts. Tables lined the dark stone walls, buried under so many parts – wires, tubes, devices – it was impossible to tell where one part ended and another began.

"Spare parts room," said Jaseen. "Unoriginal, I know, but we reserve being clever for when it counts."

_This isn't so bad_. Rodney thought. Then they moved through the next door, into the next room that was a hell of a lot more disconcerting with it's cabinets of chemicals, syringes, a stainless steel table sporting metal restraints dominating the center and a smell you only found in infirmaries and morgues. Suspicious stains on the floors, spattered here and there on the wall, made Rodney's stomach do an uncomfortable little twist. He felt suddenly not unlike Young Goodman Brown, nothing as it seemed, a mortal man propelled toward evil... and what the hell was with all the damn literary references? He'd hated English all the years he'd been forced to take it.

"Accidents happen," was all Jaseen said. Rodney had the feeling – that feeling a chill down his spine – that that was a load of bull.

They passed through a third room of consoles and people working on those consoles. Auxillary controls, Jaseen said, where the two winners would be stationed. They entered the forth room...

And Rodney's stomach nearly imploded in on itself.

There was Sheppard, dressed in a hospital gown, suspended in a box – a friggin' aquarium, a freak show cage, and he was the octopus man surrounded by a plethora of man-made tentacles. They emerged as thin wires from his back, in a single row down his spine from the base of his skull to the small of his back; as tubes from under both collarbones, his stomach, his chest over his heart; as a single thick tube from a black oxygen mask suctioned to his pale face.

"The interface," Rodney heard Jaseen say from far away as she led them round the tank. He followed, an automaton running on backup as his brain slowly shattered. "Please, do not trouble yourselves with this. I can assure you this man is feeling no pain. The interface once required the use of a chair and one with Ancestor blood. The chair was damaged beyond repair, so we fashioned a new interface. Crude, yes, but harmless, and the man before you was catatonic when we found him."

Jaseen placed her hand against the tank, an awed look on her face as she stared up at John's body, a body turned thin and decrepit by a liquid diet and never being able to move. "Trapped in his own body," she said, sounding regretful. The mood shifted into a sunny smile. "Now, he has a whole virtual world to explore."

Rodney gagged harder and Jaseen dismissed it with a flap of her hand. "You will get used to it." And of course she hadn't noticed Rodney's reaction. She was a scientist, and no matter how much Rodney had always tried to deny it, nothing came between a scientist and the overwhelming joy of sharing their greatest achievement with those who had the mental capacity appreciate it.

So of course all she saw was wonder and mystification and a glorious machine; not horror, not a man fighting to keep dinner in his stomach and a living, breathing human battery in a tank wasting away. Forget the classics. This wasn't any of those dusty ancient classics. This was Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft and... and...

This was friggin' hell.

Part Two

She was kind enough to give him a bed this time: a stained, ripped mattress on a rusty frame in a room barely lit by a sputtering bulb struggling to keep glowing. As he sat on that mattress with his legs pulled up and his arms lying limp at his sides, she paced outside the ring of bad illumination, close enough for him to see her outline, not close enough for details.

"He knows what he's doing."

John could leave if he wanted. Just get up and walk away to a new room, or hall, or... something. Except there would always be darkness, always be puddles and always be _her_. And he hurt. Crap, how he hurt, every joint on fire and his skull too small for his brain. The cold had fused itself to his bone marrow, sucking energy like a wet sponge – bit by bit, slow but always with plenty of room left to absorb. All he wanted to do was sleep but he wasn't stupid. To close your eyes while she was in the room was a victory for her, and she was always, _always_ in the damn room, somewhere, everywhere. You blink and there she wasn't. You blink and there she was, hand in the chest and a knife in the back.

"He moves quickly through my systems. Learns quickly. He could fix everything in days." John could see her pause. "But I cannot trust his intent." She resumed. "He is your friend." She paused. "Unless... he understands." She resumed. "Tell me, John. Tell me of Rodney. Does he understand necessity? Will he free you? You think he will. He has the means. But then why has he not done so? Tell me. What does he believe? Or is he as soft as the meat in your chest?"

Phantom pain made John's sternum twinge. He refused to answer, there being no point. She was in his head, pretty much the majority of his being these days. There was nothing he could hide from her, and being a recalcitrant stubborn bastard was still his only pathetic means of rebellion. The way he figured it, about three to four more synchronizations, and there'd be nothing left of him to torment. Which was a really good thing because she needed him. The bonding went both ways and he could see into her just as easily as she could him. She needed more than his gene to work, she needed his imagination, his guidance; even a smart gun was only as smart as the one holding it. Without that living, outside source to think for her, point her in the right direction, she was just an over-sized canon with a crappy aim. So went the woes of all weapons throughout history.

It would be quite the kick in her ass if she killed him. Not that he wanted to die, not like this, not if there was a chance to live. There was always a chance: _always options. Always. They're just hard to find, sometimes_.

Bile pooled in a burning puddle at the back of his throat. He had to swallow more than once to push it back.

She stopped again. "He changes when he looks at you. Decrease of colorization in his face, shaking hands, dilated pupils, increased heart-rate, adrenaline, moisture secretion. As you might say – he has the look of a man about to bolt. Or is it vomit? Colorization and increase of stomach acid would suggest the latter. I know what you are thinking. There is no need for a connection – I sense all within and near my primary matrix. Rodney is afraid. Always afraid."

She stepped into the light in all her pale, sickly glory, like an Ancestor corpse not quite ready to decompose. "From all that I have processed of this Rodney from your mind, I have come to the conclusion that the outlet of his fear is not focused entirely on you. He has come for another purpose, a purpose that may be antithesis to my purpose."

"Hell yes it's antithesis to your purpose," John growled. Talking wasn't so bad when it was in support of what _she_ wasn't happy about.

She tilted her head to one side, lank hair hanging wet and stiff as dead sticks. "Shall I ask him?"

John stiffened. "You can do that?" He hadn't meant to ask out loud. Neither did he regret it when she answered.

"Yes." It was hard to remember, sometimes, that she was just a machine at heart. Cold and lifeless and confined to logic. Everything she did to him, she did according to her program. Why she had to go about following that programming like a sadistic bitch he'd yet to figure out.

"I will not act as proxy for you," she said.

John shrugged. "Didn't expect you to."

"Under different circumstances, I would have done so. But I cannot trust that you will not say things to aid in your escape. You will get in the way of my purpose. Perhaps your friend will not. He understands my systems. He will understand what is needed."

"You know what they say about assumptions," John snorted. "You don't know a damn thing about McKay, and nothing you dig out of my head is going to enlighten you."

She tilted her head the other way. The small puddle next to the bed rippled and shimmered. The scene was John and Rodney, and Doranda. Rodney asking for trust, John giving it. Rodney fixing what couldn't be fixed until the last minute when John pulled him from it.

"He learned his lesson," John said, looking away.

"Are you are certain of th-?"

"He learned his lesson!" John barked, snapping his head around and glaring at her. She could poke and prod and pull memories from his skull like pulling teeth but that's all they were – memories. No, less than memories: images, her "substantial proof" of why she was right and he was wrong and why there was no point in arguing otherwise. The emotions behind the memories meant nothing. And neither, it seemed, did the memories that followed after the ones she plucked from his head.

"Look deeper, lady. The man may have an ego a couple of miles high and he sucks the majority of the time at social norms, but he's the smartest guy in two galaxies. When he learns something that matters, it stays with him, and you can't get a much bigger lesson than blowing up part of a solar system and _almost_ blowing yourself up with it."

"You trust him, then?" she asked,

"Yes."

"With your life?"

John narrowed his eyes, staring hard and penetrating. "Yes."

Her head tilted back to the other side. "Then it is even more imperative that I speak with him."

---------------------------

Rodney picked at ribbons and flakes of the fleshy gray crap Jaseen called eggs. He ate under the duress of his hypoglycemia and keeping his strength up, shoving a ribbon or flake into his mouth every two minutes, chewing, swallowing, then repeating after another two minutes.

"Is the food not to your liking?" asked Jaseen from her place at the head of the table. She was always so eager to please him, ridiculously ecstatic over the grains of progress Rodney had achieved: little tiny, dust-mote grains she insisted were leaps and bounds. It sometimes made Rodney wonder just how pathetically slow progress had been before he'd arrived.

"Fine," Rodney said, and for show shoved egg into his mouth before the allotted two minutes.

It was getting next to impossible to swallow anything with the image of his friend in a fishtank branded to his brain. On his first day of being trapped in the same room with a waking nightmare, he'd made a valiant effort not to look at the damn tank. But realistically it was impossible, like trying to tear your eyes away from a car wreck. What was it about the horrible things of the world that made you stare?

No, not stare. Study. The scientist in him studying an interface design – the wires and tubes and ports and readings; the human in him studying the human; the friend him studying what he could have sworn was inflamed skin around the port sites. Sections of gown had been removed to make an entry-way for the ports, large enough for Rodney to see the damaged skin around it.

Rodney nibbled a corner of toast, then resumed poking and prodding the thin membrane over the green-yellow yolk. He was certain it was only a matter of time before he puked it all back up, anyway. Probably before lunch.

"Out of curiosity," he blurted, "what keeps the port entrance sites from getting infected?" He'd meant to ask the other day, at lunch, then dinner, but it was hard to talk about any of it while acting nonchalant and keeping the food already in his stomach in his stomach.

Yesterday at lunch, Rodney had asked with as much fascinated curiosity as he could muster what kept the body alive and healthy in that tank. Jaseen had happily gushed about "her interface device" all through the meal.

The tube in John's stomach fed him a constant diet of liquid so nutrient packed that none of it needed to be removed from the body. Regular water was pumped directly through the I.V. in his heart. All waste is liquid, sucked through the philters at the top of the tank, clean water pumped from the bottom creating a current that kept "The Source's" body from sinking to the bottom. That's what she called him, "The Source."

Rodney hadn't been able to suppress a shiver over the nauseating thought of John swimming in his own urine. He'd spent the better part of that first day trying to find the protocols, commands, codes, anything that would get John out of that thing. All under the pretense of "getting to know the system." By the end of the day, he'd discovered that lesser functions – such as diagnostics - had to be run by an outside source, either initiated by the interface or someone else. The weapon itself could only be activated and guided by the interface – score one for humans and that nifty thing called imagination. The machine as a whole was such a damn patchwork that power-up and diagnostics ran one system at a time, the outside source having to tell the stupid machine which part to power up or check on next. The whole thing took ten minutes, at most – less if more than one outside source was helping out – and an all around pain in the ass if one system refused to boot or run because another system hadn't been initiated yet. Or in the case of diagnostics, was still running a diagnostic.

Jaseen tapped an area just under her collar bone. "The tubes here. Once a week the right tube will take a small blood sample to be analyzed. If illness is detected, the left tube will pump antibiotics into the blood stream."

"And um... what of muscle atrophy?" Rodney asked next.

Jaseen waved her fork indifferently. "Never been a problem. The weapon is programmed to take into consideration the well being of the Source. If there are problems that the weapon cannot fix, it will let us know, and it has yet to warn us of any dire health issues of the Source."

_Except the mental ones_. Rodney ground his teeth. He only had Jaseen's assumption that John's brain was in a computer-simulated happy land, and there was no being certain of it just by looking at Sheppard's face, most of which was buried behind a gas mask.

But Rodney was certain he'd seen a furrow or two pinch Sheppard's brow – brief, but there, and familiar from the times Sheppard had been in pain. Unless he was just thinking, puzzling something out, frustrated with an aspect of happy-land that wasn't all that happy. Rodney wasn't trying to justify anything; forcing the positive was the only thing keeping him from gibbering in a corner.

He'd asked about the interface at dinner the other day – why they didn't come up with a less... _extreme_ method. A helmet, for example, or a new chair.

Jaseen had shrugged and said with a neutral smile. "This was the only way."

Translation: Jaseen was a cheap psychopath who preferred permanent over temporary, quick, and humane.

Rodney forced a little more toast into his mouth, shoving it down his throat with cloying pink fruit juice that was like drinking strawberry syrup straight from the bottle. When his stomach bucked, having all that it could take, he shoved his plate away for a skinny skittish servant to take, and stood.

"Well, that was lovely. Off to work I go, then." He plastered an equally syrupy smile onto his face.

Jaseen smiled back. "I look forward to your next progress report at dinner."

Progress thus far had been getting to know the system and replacing a few wires, just for show.

Rodney move methodical back into the dungeons, giving his stomach time to digest as much as possible. He paused in the "junk rooms," both of them, for a little shopping. A few wires, parts to replace other parts, and a glowing red light to shove into the power cell of the dead Ronon blaster he'd found the other day. Jaseen had banned weapons from the competition, but it wasn't as though Rodney had really needed one. The virus on the data chip tucked safely away in the fake box of pills had a five minute delay, enough time for Rodney to slip from the dungeon and house out into the open for the Daedalus to beam him safely aboard.

But that had been plan A. Plan B beaming both him and Sheppard. Plan C... there hadn't been a plan C, because up until now all interfaces had been nothing but chairs, not sadistic fish tanks and wires infiltrating the body. And knowing interfaces that required direct access to vital organs such as the spine and brain (knowledge based mostly on theory and a lot of science fiction movies and books), you don't go merrily disconnecting wires from said organs without something very bad happening after.

There had to be a disconnect, or how else get "The Source" out of the tank for those dire medical emergencies?

Unless you don't. You let the Source die, then get yourself a new Source. And he really needed to stop calling Sheppard the Source. It was... sick. Just too sick...

Rodney thought this at the same time he entered the weapon room, and shuddered hard enough to send a few parts dropping from his arms. All wires and tubes snaking through slits along the edges of the lid ran suspended over the floor like telephone wires all the way to the monolithic console taking up most of the back room, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. All the skittish lackeys had to do to keep Sheppard alive was pour nutrient liquid, regular liquid, and the vitamin and antibiotic regime into three tubes sealed by brass covers on the right side of the console.

And that wasn't all. On the other side of the tubes were real-time, live action monitors. Not just beeps, numbers and lines but honest to goodness images of Sheppard's insides. On one large screen, a body scan like the scanners back home on Atlantis. Another screen, Sheppard's skull, brain and brain functions highlighted in colorful patches of light. Another, a living X-ray, hazy black and white, for everyone to witness Sheppard's undulating heart, naturally thumping, thumping, thumping. Always thumping, the persistent drum-beat of life. Which was a good thing, of course – obviously - but also a little distractingly macabre. There was no turning a blind eye and deaf ear to what was being done to Sheppard.

Just like a car wreck.

But not as bad as yesterday, and that made Rodney nervous. He was getting used to it.

No. _Using_, he was using it. As soon as the horror shivered itself away, anger surged hot and heart-pounding over Sheppard's pale face and stick arms. Good, because anger was good. Anger got things done.

Rodney connected his tablet to one of the console's many ports and started the painstaking power-up. Only the interface remained powered and running indefinitely, for obvious reasons.

The left half of the console blinked to life: monitors and lights and crap Rodney had yet to figure out what they did or why they were needed. The weapon itself still read at forty percent recharge, just like yesterday. Firewalls against those pesky power backlashes and surges, still functioning, still at one-hundred percent. Database, good to go. Some system Rodney didn't even know what it was but wasn't going to take chances messing with – check.

Between initiating systems, Rodney searched for that elusive little program that would set Sheppard free. He only needed the database, and had already determined that this Frankenstein of a computer didn't record what was searched for in the database and by who. As long as the piece of crap didn't pull a HAL...

System scan//run:33421execute ls.... Hello Rodney.

Rodney blinked. Son of a bitch! "Uh...What?"

Hello Rodney.

His heart skittered fast. "John?"

Not John. May I be of assistance?

Oh hell no! "What?"

What would you like to know?

Oh crap, oh, crap, oh, crap... "What?"

Please specify exact question. Or not. What you search for cannot be found. It is against my purpose to release the one called John. Therefore, it is against my programming. Can I be of assistance elsewhere?

Rodney's head twitched. "Huh?"

I cannot release the one called John. It is against my programming. Can I be of assistance elsewhere?

"Whoa, wait, what?" Rodney said, utterly forgetting in that moment that he was talking to a computer that was talking _back_. "What do you mean against you're programming? What... but... you're a friggin' computer! You're programming is whatever I make it."

Not this.

"Yes, this. You're telling me there's no..." he tossed up a hand. "No emergency override or code or _something_ to disconnect the interface. Say for, I don't know, emergency purposes – like a heart attack or death or -?"

I have buried the protocol. I move it when there is an attempt to locate it. It cannot be found unless absolutely needed. It is not needed.

I know what you are doing, Rodney.

Rodney's heart skipped a beat, then tightened like it was trying to cower against his ribs. "Wh-what?" And he suddenly remembered that he was talking to a computer, or supposed to be. Computers weren't supposed to hide things, or make decisions on their own, or respond in regular human words without codes or numbers or executions. His lips twitched in a jittery smile.

"Sheppard? Is that you? Because, seriously, as far as practical jokes go, this is pretty juvenile even for your sick mind. So stop screwing around -"

I am not John. But John is here. He believes you are here to save him. He believes you can remove him from the interface.

"He is... does... is? He knows... knows I'm here?"

I have made him aware of your presence. I have seen you in his mind. He believes you will help him. Is that your purpose here, Rodney McKay?

"Well, um..." Rodney glanced around for the proverbial man behind a curtain, because there was still no way he could be having this conversation with a computer. "I really wouldn't mind having him out of that thi – uh, you. Out of that tank, free, alive, well, that kind of thing. How is he, anyway? Good? Living it up in paradise? What?"

He resists me it replied. For some inexplicable reason, the words sent chill after chill down Rodney's spine. He gulped.

"Resists? Sounds like Sheppard. If he doesn't see the good in it, he won't do it," Rodney said with a nervous chuckle. Of course Sheppard wouldn't like it – trapped in a box and a fake world, forced to play battery and navigation for a mutilated computer and literal mad scientist who Rodney highly doubted bought Sheppard in a catatonic state. And if there had been test runs to determine the extent of repairs – and there had been according to the logs, a lot – and Jaseen was having him aim at something he didn't like (say, for example, a village of the people enemy to the people kind enough to let her live near their borders, possibly for a price) then hell yes Sheppard was going to resist.

Rodney couldn't help feeling a little smug over it, for the Colonel's sake.

I will admit that the interface is damaging.

Rodney dropped the smug smile. "Damaging? What, what, what..."

My systems are incomplete. My interface is fractured. Repeat reinitialization causes damage. For there to be no damage, John must submit to complete neural take over. We must become as one. John fights this. Because he fights, he becomes less. If he continues, he will die, and I will lose guidance. I will not be what I am supposed to be.

"And if you do become one?" Rodney asked, hesitant, afraid of the answer.

I will be what I am meant to be.

"I meant Sheppard. What happens to him? Just a feeling but when you say 'become one' that gives me the feeling it involves something permanent. You become one and what happens to John, his mind? Him?"

There was a pause.

I do not understand. John will be John. He will be part of what I am.

"Let me guess," Rodney said, tightening his grip on the tablet until his knuckles turned white. "You two become a single happy entity, and he can never come out of that damn tank, _ever_. Am I right?"

He will cease to be if we are disconnected.

"Ah, but that's not the case now. Is that what you're saying? You two stay apart and that increases the chances for me to get him out."

Yes. But the protocols are buried. It cannot be be done without the protocols or John will be damaged or cease to exist.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Great. Perfect. Of course." There went the Ronon way of doing things by blowing it all to hell. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the tablet. "Unless you're lying to me. Are you lying to me? Can computers lie? I mean, any other time with any other computer I'd say no, flat out. But for a mindless machine existing on the whims of human input, you're certainly expressing a lot of – how shall I put this? - rather human-like survival instincts? Unless that's also part of you're programming. All in the name of throwing me off and preventing me from taking your precious interface buddy." And he wouldn't be surprised, not with all the messed up firewalls he'd come across on Atlantis and elsewhere in Pegasus.

No answer, just a cursor blinking like a mindless idiot asked to calculate two plus two. But of course it wouldn't answer if it didn't know the answer. Or didn't realize what it was doing. And how was any of this possible to begin with? Computers didn't react unless programmed to react. And programming a computer to protect the self could get pretty damn messy if not handled right. The replicators were – had been - living proof of that.

Who would be stupid enough to program a weapon, of all things, to protect itself? Besides the Ancients, of course, but even they had to have learned their lesson eventually...

Rodney snapped his fingers rapidly before finally pointing at the tank. "The interface. If you know me through John, that means he's not just there to take commands and provide direction, you're in his head. Or can get inside his head, whatever. And being the screwed up mess of parts that you are, I'd bet and probably win that bet that you have nothing to block any residual human influence..."

Rodney gaped. Was it even possible? What he was theorizing held too many unnerving possibilities – interface-computers programmed - _influenced_ – by the ones they interfaced with. The human psyche entering the computer as the computer bulldozed its way into the human psyche. Emotions, personalities, survival instincts; humanity backlashing.

"Radek and I used to argue about this," Rodney said, mostly to himself. "Atlantis is one massive interface. It has all these.. these... _firewalls_ that we don't really know what they're for. I always thought back up security. Radek thought to keep the wrong kind of mind from screwing everything up but I never got what he meant by that. Well, I did, but it was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. But it also _isn't_ if you build a computer smart enough or open enough to accept the illogical commands of the human imagination..."

Running a swift hand through his hair, Rodney began to pace. "Smart enough, even, to pick and choose emotions and instincts that could come in handy – such as hiding the command to release the living half of the interface. And I'd imagine that that kind of an instinct would look incredibly appealing for a computer abandoned, picked apart and slapped back together...."

Rodney stopped and stared in wide-eyed disbelief at the console. "If I didn't know any better, I'd make the assumption that you're a nervous wreck." He looked down at the tablet.

I must maintain my existence that I may maintain my purpose.

"Which means doing whatever it takes, like hiding certain commands. Does that also mean ratting me out? Huh?"

I do not understand.

"Telling on me. Alerting my intentions to those who command me."

Only if an inquiry is made into any threats against my system. You are no threat.

Beaming smugly, Rodney held up a finger. "Ah but what if I said... I mean, hypothetically speaking what if I had the means to destroy your systems? The knowledge, a program, a virus, for example? Tear your wires out, gut you like a fish? Hmm?" It was risky to ask, he knew, but he had to be sure. If he used the virus, or found the program to release John, he would need to plan accordingly. The minutes he would have used to escape after the upload were going to be lost depending on how long it took to get John out of that tank, and Rodney had already tried using the comm this deep underground, testing it. Needless to say, it hadn't worked.

Rodney also didn't deny the vindictive joy of trying to make a machine holding his friend captive squirm a little – if possible.

You are no threat. To hurt me is to hurt the one called John. Deny power to my systems, the system supporting John will cease, and John will cease. Remove vital parts, John will cease. He will drown -

"Not if I pull him out in time," Rodney cut in.

I will make him cease.

Rodney's blood froze. "What?"

Synchronization takes one point three seconds. In the time it takes to upload virus or program, or remove parts, I will have interfaced. I will make John's vital systems cease.

"You're bluffing," Rodney sneered.

Observe.

The thumping that had finally become background noise to ignore increased. Rodney glanced at the monitors flashing warnings, stats scrolling rapidly up the side and numbers climbing. He snapped his attention to the tank and about swallowed his own tongue seeing Sheppard shivering in a stiffened seize; his limbs rigid as real sticks, veins and tendons protruding and his eyes squeezing shut agonizingly tight.

"Stop," Rodney breathed. He tossed the tablet aside and slammed the tank with his palms. "Stop it! Stop it, you're killing him you friggin' bastard! Stop, now!"

But the thumping thumped faster, joined by the piercing shrill of a heart in tachycardia. John started to thrash, bony hands and bony feet thudding against the glass. Rodney could feel the vibrations; he added to them with his hands.

"_Stop_! Damn it, stop, please!"

Then it did. The shrill vanished, the thumping decreased to normal sinus and Sheppard's body flowed back to its original limp suspension. Rodney stood there, staring slack jawed and so sick it seemed a miracle he didn't vomit. He remembered with a jolt the tablet, and even though he didn't want to hear what that damn computer had to say, he doubted he had a choice. He pulled away from the tank, snatching the tablet from the floor in route to the console.

I will not kill him. He is needed. But to make me cease, he will cease.

Rodney ground his teeth. "If you can't have him, no one can – is that it?"

I will do what I must to continue my purpose. You are like John. You do not understand this, though you have done what you claim you have needed to do to maintain existences. Through me, many will continue to exist. Why do you not accept this?

Rodney tossed the tablet onto the console, slammed his elbows down beside it and cradled his suddenly aching head in his shaking, clammy hands. His heart was till pounding, out of sync to the gentle thump-thump-thump of Sheppard's heart and the disjointed rhythm was pissing him off. Too much chaos in the room; he couldn't take it anymore. He needed quiet, solitude, time to think and plot and scrounge up a plan D. Most of all, he needed to get the hell away from HAL and its too human ultimatum.

Straightening, Rodney grabbed the tablet, making the mistake of looking at it one last time.

Repairs will make the interface as it was. When John allows for interface, his existence will be pleasant – a world of his own making. But repairs are needed for the virtual world to function as it once did. John will feel no more pa -

Rodney cut the connection. He stormed out, or started to, but his eyes wandered back to the tank and Sheppard. His body soon followed and he stood there, staring.

"I'll get you out of there, Sheppard," he said. "I promise, I will. But you need to wait a little longer..." Rodney choked. He couldn't believe he was asking this of Sheppard. _Just a little longer. Wallow in hell and agony a little longer, Sheppard._ He shouldn't even have to be asking. He should be dragging Sheppard out of there as the virus ate its way through devil HAL. He should be hauling Sheppard's skinny ass up the stairs and out to the wide open skies where the Daedalus was waiting to take them home.

Sheppard should have been free yesterday.

"Little longer, that's all," Rodney squeaked. It took effort that made his guts knot to turn and walk away, so knew he could completely forget about lunch.

------------------------------

"I thought he would understand."

John pried one eyelid open. "What part of my memories gave you that idea?" Then he let it slide back shut, just for a moment to rest, then he forced it back open. He'd barely had the energy for that one stupid little action and now he had no energy left. He was freezing, his bones and back throbbing, and he couldn't even chatter his teeth, he was so exhausted. And she hadn't even fully interfaced this time, just made the threat of it.

"He is a scientist. He understands my systems. He should understand my purpose and the necessities of its continuation." She was moving just outside the pathetic ring of light in a slow but tight pace. Every so often, she would move in close enough for John to catch details – hunched shoulders and the muscles beneath the brow bunched and protruding against the tight, white skin. It was a betrayal of emotion if John had ever seen it. Confusion creating frustration, possibly even self-pity. The way John figured it, you don't exist on an interface with a human component without getting a little human taint in return. He wondered if Rodney had figured out the same.

What was he thinking? Of course McKay had.

"Your pain would cease if he fixed me. I tried to make him understand this. I do not think he listened."

John snorted, but it came out more as a whistling wheeze. Even his lungs hurt. A damn virtual environment where he wasn't supposed to be real, and his lungs hurt. They were phantom pains – his brain filling in the blanks despite being aware that none of it was real. Which sucked in so many ways, especially after all that smug triumph over the control wielded in the fog-people world.

"It's kind of hard to listen to reason while watching one of your people being tortured," John breathed on a sigh. If this was self-pity he was seeing, if she expected him to join her personal pity-party, then John was happy to let her down. "You just gave him good reason not to like you."

She stopped and snapped her head his way, lank hair whipping stiff as blades. "Can you tell me with a clear mind that you have not had to cross lines?"

The puddle at the foot of the bed shimmered. John getting Elizabeth to agree to let Ronon threaten Kavanaugh for information. Ordering Rodney not to wake the nanites in Elizabeth. Again killing Sumner. Again Wallace and the Wraith.

"There is a word..." she said in a voice so flat a needle could stand upright on it. "Hypocrite. You are both hypocrites. You hold fates in the palm of your hands, decide life and death for what you call the greater good. Is that not my purpose? To defend, destroy, decide for the greater good? Yet, I am the monster. By your logic and memories, are you not also a monster?"

John's chest constricted. He focused on his open hand, but the puddle and its images stayed fixed out of the corner of his eye. His fingers twitched with the need to close into a fist. Twitch was all they could do.

"It's not the same," he whispered. He wracked his brain for a unifying argument but could only scrounge up pathetic excuses for each individual incident. And even most of those fell flat.

"Did you not say you sought other options? In the end, these were the only options remaining to you. Why is my option any different?"

John refused to answer. In point of fact, he couldn't answer. He didn't know how, not without it sounding like more excuses.

"I must know, John. What will Rodney do? Will he save you?"

"He's a friggin' genius," John breathed. "He'll sure as hell try,"

"If he cannot?"

John sighed. "Then he'll do what he has to do."

"Even if it means killing you? Are you prepared to die?" A pause. "Are you afraid to die?"

"Who really isn't?" John said. "If I didn't know any better, I'd swear you were afraid to die."

"Are you prepared to die? Are you prepared to die for the greater good?"

John closed his eye and shivered. "Always."

"Is Rodney prepared to let you die?"

John opened both eyes. "He'll do what he has to."

----------------------------------

"I can't do this, I can't, I... I can't..."

Rodney shouldn't have volunteered for this. He shouldn't have volunteered and come to this stupid planet and show off and agree to help repair a stupid machine... He couldn't do this. Too many decisions to make but not enough options to settle on the decisions he wanted.

As he fretted, he paced back and forth at the foot of the ridiculously massive canopy bed with the flowery beige duvet that kept giving him unpleasant flashbacks to visits with his aunt. The one who'd had to shave, and who'd always smelled like too much perfume and old wood. The one who'd said in her pleasant, flowery, condescending way that he wouldn't amount to much. But he was digressing.

He couldn't do this.

He fingered the fake pill box that he could have sworn gained a little weight over the course of two more days . Two more days of digging through a database that refused to cough up the means to free Sheppard; two more days of minor repairs here and there just to keep up appearances; and two more days of trying to ignore _its_ attempts at getting him to "listen to reason."

Two more days of asking John to wait.

_It_ had even gone so far as to suggest more detailed flaws in the various ways Rodney could destroy the damn weapon. Energy backlash shooting through the cables connected to John. Programs shutting the system down shutting John down. Viruses entering John's mind and erasing him. The latter, of course, was the kick in the gut that dragged what should have been an upload-and-go into days of gut-turning deliberation; weighing pros and cons, finding more cons than pros.

And what it all came down to was that John could die, and the only options remaining to him were letting John die quick or letting him die slow.

No, he didn't even have that since _it_ had promised a last-ditch interface if he tried. He blamed Jaseen for that one. Jaseen and the Ancients just to cover all the bases, forcing tedious programming on helpless technicians with better things to do, complete albeit anal control over everything except the damn interface. Because a smart computer was an easy-to-use computer and its creators were too lazy to try out other options.

Rodney dropped onto the edge of the bed. Any attack, _it_ interfaced and John died. Make the repairs, clean up the system, John lived but Jaseen had her weapon to sell to the highest bidder, shoot whoever annoyed her or her "buddies," or whatever the hell she wanted to do with it. Micheal could get wind of it and take it from her, or the Genii or any replicators they happened to overlook.

Or, she could decide to go all benevolent, let Atlantis bribe her into using it against the Wraith.

And John would still be trapped. Jaseen wouldn't give him or her permanent interface up, and Atlantis wouldn't give her someone else to use; leaving John stuck in a world he would know was fake, and because he would know he would fight. Even if perpetual interface was achieved, he would fight, and who knew what that would do to him. Then Atlantis would fight to get him back, incurring Jaseen's frustration and an aim that would destroy villages, maybe even Atlantis itself should she find away, until they finally admitted defeat and backed off.

Those were Rodney's options.

Rodney gripped the box in his clammy palm, tight but not so tight that he would crush it. He hated that stupid weapon, its stupid potential, its stupid interface. It was always the crap they could really use right now that ended up biting them in the ass.

Rodney needed to get John out of there, somehow, any way possible. Even if it meant... which Rodney knew Sheppard would want if everything else failed. It would be the kind thing, really. Doing him a favor, Sheppard would say and, _damn it_, Rodney hated thinking like Sheppard. The bastard always had a point but the worst points imaginable. Of course Sheppard wouldn't want to exist in a fake world, happy or not, knowing it was fake as the real world carried on without him, the safety of Atlantis and its people completely beyond his control. Crap, that alone would be torture; the real torment even if fixing the stupid interface did nothing to alleviate John's pain – giving him the happy world while he suffered the agony of something else residing in his brain. That damn computer was so much scrap-parts, Rodney doubted it knew anything for a fact, merely basing its knowledge on past experiences.

And John would always fight, pain or not. Sheppard's strength had always been more about heart than muscle; positive thinking and stubborn resolve and all the stuff that Rodney had always accepted as-is with the pilot. That was John Sheppard in a nut-shell: obnoxiously persistent, annoyingly hopeful, irritatingly pushy. Like that stupid energizer Bunny – he just kept going.

Rodney had envied that of him, though the day he admitted it would be the day Zelenka was on the same competence level as him. That persistent, hopeful, pushy optimism had, inadvertently, become Rodney's lifeline to sanity their first two years in this galaxy. The day Sheppard talked of packing up and leaving for good was the day you knew it was time to really panic, and John had so many reasons to pack up and say good-bye. Yet he never did.

That was the kind of strength that mattered, especially now, trapped in a virtual world. Of course Sheppard would be fighting, but as _it_ had said, the more John fought, the weaker he became. Unless it was capable of lying after all. Rodney grudgingly doubted it. It had been pretty damn honest about a lot of things detrimental to its survival thus far.

If Rodney could keep the interface from happening during the time it took to upload the virus, then maybe, _maybe_ John had a chance – at least more of a chance than if Rodney started pulling wires. Sheppard had been weakened, therefore the interface needed to be weakened; bring it to John's current level of strength to give him a real fighting chance.

And if it didn't work... then... a fighting chance would be all John could ask for, Rodney knew. He stopped that line of thought right there. It would work. He just had to stay positive – annoyingly optimistic and hopeful, just this once.

Just like Sheppard.

Rodney grabbed his tablet and scrolled through the basic system protocols and programs downloaded to peruse at his convenience.

He smiled. All Sheppard needed was a fighting chance, and Rodney would give it to him.

Rodney bobbed his head in a sharp nod. "This'll work. I can do this, this will work." He stood and grabbed the dead Ronon blaster from under the mattress, tucking it into his waistband under his shirt and jacket.

"I can do this." It was still early, an hour before dinner. Rodney had called it quits before actual punch-out time with the excuse of going over some downloaded data. Which, in retrospect, hadn't been far from the truth, just not the detailed truth.

"This'll work, this'll work, this'll work," Rodney whispered. Three sets of stairs, past skinny nervous lackeys and not-so-skinny nervous lackeys giving everyone the evil eye. He gave them a wan smile when he passed. "Last minute diagnostic. I think – think something isn't working like it should. Could be wrong, though. We'll see!"

He passed through the three rooms, his fellow winners reverse engineering their asses off last minute in the first room. The "Frankenstein's lab" smelled strongly of formaldehyde, making Rodney wonder what Jaseen had been up to today. She always seemed to time things so that no one ever walked in - "on accident" - to find out. Rodney had never been good with names but he was pretty decent when it came to faces.

Certain faces among the skinny, nervous lackeys were missing, he was sure of it.

Rodney swallowed. If – no – _as soon as_ he got Sheppard out, they were going to have to haul ass to the surface. Sheppard wasn't the only ATA gene carrier within vicinity of that damn interface anymore.

He entered the dungeon with the damn interface and stupid weapon with its stupid will to live, and went straight for the tank. Standing before it, he was overcome with a complete lack of the right words to say. What do you say to the guy who'd saved your ass a dozen times – forcing friendship on you whether you liked it or not – and who's life you wanted to save only with the slight chance of that rescue being little more than saving him from a fate worse than death... through death?

_Except that's not going to happen – though it could. But it won't_. Besides, what did it matter? Sheppard was in a tank and probably couldn't hear Rodney, anyway.

Just in case...

Rodney leaned in close enough for the fine hairs of his jaw to brush the glass. He'd always sucked at saying the right thing. But something needed to be said, just in case.

"Sheppard? Hey, uh, Sheppard, I don't know if you can hear me. I know water's supposed to carry sound better than air and all that but there may be a proximity thing involved and no way am I putting my mouth on this thing. Looks like it hasn't been cleaned forever. Not that that's here or there... listen, if you can, I mean. I said I'd get you out of there, and I will, one way or another. You just... just need to hang on, stay strong," Rodney winced at the platitude. "Yes. Yes, stay strong, just for a little longer. Keep fighting. I know it must hurt but... it'll be worth it." Then quickly added, "eventually, when I figure out how to get you out, which should be soon," for the sake of _it_ who would be listening close. Rodney patted the tank with a shaky hand as though it were Sheppard's flesh and blood shoulder, not lifeless glass. "Not leaving you behind, buddy. No way in hell. This hell especially. Gotta... get back to work now. Talk to you soon, I hope."

Rodney moved to the console and jacked in.

You are persistent.

Rodney shrugged. "Mm, learned from the best. Starting diagnostics, just so you know. I thought I detected a glitch." He typed in the command to check power output. Then he reached into his pocket, sliding his thumb across the hidden panel of the pill box.

I detected no glitch during the last run.

"Oh, really? Silly me. Forgot to upload it." He slammed the data crystal into his tablet.

-------------------------------

Cold pain pierced John's back, methodical, inching toward his spine. He arched with a scream. Reflex and shock made him grab the blade, like the first time she had interfaced. And just like the first time, the blade cut through his skin like it was mud.

"Rodney is a fool," she said, flat as always. "I warned him. I reasoned. He will not listen. You all... will not listen. You... have brought... this... on... yourselves."

Unlike the last time, the blade caught and slowed, from inches to centimeters until it stopped moving.

"You... are... hypo... crites. You..."

John felt the knife's tip hovering a centimeter from his spine. He pushed against the knife and the knife started moving away.

-----------------------------

"Come on, come on," Rodney hissed through gritted teeth. His fingers danced the fastest they'd ever danced over the touch-pad. Programs were entered, denied due to ongoing diagnostic of power output; inputed, denied, inputed, denied as orange crept up the transparent bar in the right-hand corner of the screen, inch by agonizing inch.

Denied. Accepted, then Rodney inputed the next program. Any nanosecond wasted between uploading the individual diagnostic programs for each system was a nanosecond Sheppard didn't have. The interface flashed at five percent.

Denied, denied, accepted. Still at five percent. Denied, denied, accepted. Twenty percent viral upload. Fifteen percent interface.

Rodney snarled, "Son of a bitch! Leave him alone!"

-------------------------------

"I need... you... John... I.... need... it... is... f- or gre-ater... g-ood..."

The knife fought back, and of the two inches gained, one was lost. John clenched his jaw so hard he thought for sure his teeth were going to crack, and pushed, creating a stalemate.

"No... options... No..."

----------------------------

Denied, denied, accepted. Denied, denied, denied, accepted. Forty percent viral upload. Thirty percent interface. Zelenka was right, computers could be tainted by human emotions because this piece of crap weapon wasn't giving up without a fight.

Denied, denied, denied, accepted. Fifty-seven percent viral upload. Fifty-four percent interface. It was a race. Rodney was racing a damn computer.

_So what else is new in this friggin' galaxy?_ Rodney sneered. Man against machine, time against man, down to the wire with only a computer program between him and a very unwanted outcome – this was when he shined.

_I thought you worked better under pressure?_ Rodney smirked. "I do, actually. Always have."

Denied, denied, accepted. Ninety-eight percent viral upload. Ninety-seven percent interface. "Oh no you don't. Come on, Sheppard, Fight. Fight the little piece of crap. Fight it!"

----------------------------

The blade's tip was like electricity on Sheppard's spine; barely a hair's breath in between and it was agony burning every nerve ending. Sheppard arched impossibly, screaming, pulling with the strength born of desperation.

The blade inched back.

----------------------------

Ninety-eight percent viral upload. Ninety seven – ninety-six, ninety-five percent interface.

Rodney crowed, "_Yes, yes, come on Sheppard!_ You're doing it. Just a little longer, come on!"

Denied, denied, accepted, denied...Ninety-four percent interface, Eighty-nine percent interface...

One hundred percent viral upload.

----------------------------

"No." She said.

With a tremulous snarl and whimper, John pulled. The knife slid clean from his back.

Then she was before him, a sick and wavering thing struggling to stay upright, swaying like a stalk of dried grass in a gale-force wind.

"No," she said, no fear, no sorrow, no resignation – an automated voice repeating what it had been programmed to say. She fell to her knees.

Then to her face.

The single weak light dimmed, hiding her in shadows.

Leaving John in darkness.

-------------------------

"_Yes_!" Rodney cried, tossing the table aside and breaking into a run for the tank. Only to remember he needed a way up to the tank's lid. He spun around on his heels and ran to the darkened corner where Jaseen kept the ladder for the lackeys who came to check on the tank's system. A regular, earth-like folding ladder that was just as heavy to carry.

Half-way to his destination, a loud resonating pop nearly made him drop it, then again when he saw the wires and tubes disconnect from the ports in Sheppard's body; a body that was slowly sinking to the bottom of the tank.

"Crap!" Rodney fumbled with the ladder before finally setting it up. He clamored to the top, and with a heave that almost dropped him, shoved the lid off the tank. He then reached in all the way up to his shoulders, grabbing John beneath the armpits.

"I've got you Sheppard," he said. Rodney heaved with a grunt and straining muscles. "Ga, why're you always heavier than you look!" He shifted his hold when Sheppard's upper back cleared the top, sliding his arms around Sheppard's chest. With each heave, he took a step down the ladder. On the final heave that would clear Sheppard's legs from the tank, he staggered off the ladder and fell on his butt with a pile of Sheppard in his lap.

Rodney ignored the throb in his tailbone, more intent on finding a throb in Sheppard's throat. When he fingered Sheppard's neck, he felt nothing.

Cold shot through Rodney's veins straight to his heart. "Oh no." Laying Sheppard out flat on his back, he placed his ear to the pilot's chest just below the heart-port.

Still nothing.

"No. No, no, no, no, Sheppard, no, don't do this to me. Don't you dare do this to me!" Rodney snapped upright and felt along the edge of the pilot's ribcage to his sternum, just as Carson had drilled into him time and again starting back to the first time Sheppard's heart had stopped. He placed the heel of his hand on the spot, covered it with his other hand, locked his elbows and pumped.

"One, two, three... come on Sheppard... five six... come on... eight, nine... come on..."

Fifteen. He stopped, checked a pulse that still wasn't there, a heart beat that was still silent. He didn't have to breathe for Sheppard, the O2 mask on back up. The loss of interface connections and feeding tubes didn't kill, but drowning did, and Jaseen couldn't lose her precious _source_.

Rodney started again. One, two, three to fifteen. Check for pulse. No pulse. One to fifteen, again, and he was certain he'd just cracked a rib. Check for pulse...

Gentle thrumming tapped Rodney's fingers beneath the clammy skin of Sheppard's neck. Rodney held his breath.

The beat grew stronger; not by much, but good enough. Rodney pressed his ear to Sheppard's chest, remembering to breathe at the quiet, almost timid yet steady thump of Sheppard's heart.

Rodney started laughing, high and just a little hysterical. "That's it, Sheppard. That's it. Knew you weren't a quitter." And not giving a damn about personal space, the crap covering Sheppard or anything else, he gathered Sheppard's upper body into his arms and just held onto him, pressing his forehead into the crown of hair that even when wet still defied gravity.

"Don't you _ever_ do that to me again."

"What is going on!"

Rodney snapped his head up.

Jaseen charged into the room flanked by burly lackeys and two skinny, nervous servants. She didn't even look at the tank, her gaze going straight to Rodney and her precious "source" out of his cage and in Rodney's arms.

Suddenly, Rodney gave a damn again. "Oh, uh... um..." a thousand excuses piled into his brain until there was barely room to think, so it took him a moment to remember the gun currently digging into his back. Freeing up an arm, he snatched it from his waist band and pointed it at Jaseen.

"I quit and so does Sheppard," he squeaked. "Now if-if you, uh, could, please back away – off. Please back off. That would be... a really smart move."

Jaseen and her lackey's complied, looking murderous, except for the skinny servants who just looked scared.

It took some rather precarious maneuvering and juggling for Rodney to get Sheppard out of the mask and over his shoulders in a pathetic fireman's lift while keeping the gun on Jaseen. When Rodney was able to stand and certain he wasn't going to drop, he slowly backed away around the tank to the door.

"Oh, um, one more thing," he said. "His name's Sheppard, not the _source_. But I suppose that's even less than a moot point right now." He backed through the door, kicked it closed, and locked it. It would buy him time, hopefully enough to get the hell out of this house and into the open. Rodney then turned and ran.

Sheppard had shed a considerable amount of pounds, unfortunately not enough to make the going easy, and the winding stairs about killed Rodney. He pushed himself past his limits on reaching the top and heading to the nearest bedroom, dumping Sheppard on a soft surface. His vertabrea cracked when he straightened.

"Damn it, Sheppard, either you're requisitioning a chiropractor when we get home or paying for the medical bills."

Sheppard didn't respond, didn't even twitch and, with a jolt of alarm, Rodney wasn't sure if he was breathing. He checked Sheppard's pulse, sighing in relief when he found it. Still, Sheppard didn't look so hot – his breathing shallow, his eyes sunken and surrounded by shadows, and his skin so pale it was almost gray, getting all the little blue veins and red capillaries to stand out. The skin around the heart port was turning an angry red. Sheppard was also starting to shiver.

Rodney cocooned Sheppard in the dark blue duvet. He tried the fireman's carry again, only for his back to give out before he had Sheppard situated on his shoulders. He thought of just tossing the pilot over one shoulder, but decided not to risk it if his CPR really had resulted in a broken rib. With a mild sneer of displeasure, Rodney gathered Sheppard into his arms like a child.

He was more disconcerted by how small Sheppard looked wrapped up as he was. Rodney walked fast down the hall, past the color-coded rooms still littered with Ancient human junk, through the dining room, the foyer with its cracked marble floor, and out the front doors to be hit in the face by a blast of warm, humid air. He glanced up through a canopy of weeping willows as tall as redwoods, and patches of bright blue, wide open skies.

Rodney breathed deep and smiled. "Look at that, Sheppard. You see that?" He nodded. "Now that's what I'm talking about."

White light surrounded them, and they were gone.

Part 3

He rode rivers of information, wrapped in a cascade of warm prismatic light, wandering familiar paths, and still he tensed until he thought he would snap. She was there, decrepit mouse with no place to run, small, innocuous but still with an influence that made his heart pound and insides shrink. He thought his joints might be aching, his spine and chest, he couldn't be sure. She might still have power over him, for all he knew – interface and ride the rivers straight to the heart of Atlantis. He hadn't thought of that until now. Panic squeezed his chest until he could barely breathe.

"_Colonel Sheppard!"_

John always saw her skulking in the shadows out of the corner of his eye; moving like oil through the darkness when he tried to sleep; shrinking from the light when he awoke. He always waited for the agony of a cold blade tearing into his spine, or the suffocation of a hand crushing his heart, water filling his lungs. He always waited, it never came but that didn't stop the cringes of anticipation.

"_Colonel Sheppard, can you hear me?"_

The aches turned sharp. It was finally happening. She was interfacing.

_Make her stop. Don't let her do this. Please, make her stop.._.

Then she said, hunching away from the light, "I am doing nothing. The interface was not complete. I am merely a shadow." She turned her face away from the light toward the faint remnant of darkness beyond.

The pain abated back to aches. Here, in the clean safety of a true interface, Sheppard could almost feel sorry for her. She'd been like Atlantis once – clean and whole. It wasn't her fault she'd become a thing of spare parts and forced programming, like a real Frankenstein's monster.

_Almost_ feel sorry.

"You didn't need me," he said. "We could have fixed you, made you what you used to be. All you had to do was let me go."

She shook her head. "You would not have fixed me. You would have left-"

"And the one who repaired you would have found another interface, and another and another. For that reason alone we would have fixed you. To keep her from doing this to someone else."

"Or destroyed me."

John snorted. "And guess what happened, anyway. You had options, you were just too afraid to try them."

"I am a machine. I do not feel fear."

"I'd highly beg to differ."

She turned to him, regarding him with empty black eyes. "Were you afraid when you made your choices?" she asked. Then she stepped back, through the light into the darkness, and John could have sworn he caught a spark of regret before she vanished.

For no more than two heartbeats, he shared that regret. Then he found what he was looking for – a corrupted line of code polluting the river. Manipulating it out of that corruption was like molding clay about to go solid. It took effort, precise concentration. Then he was done.

John bolted upright in the chair with a gasp. Cold sweat had plastered his shirt to his chest and he quickly realized he was shivering. A hand on his shoulder made him start. Looking up, he met the concerned eyes of Dr. Zelenka.

"Colonel? Are you all right? For a moment it looked as though you were going to hyperventilate but we could not pull you out."

Getting his breathing back under control, John waved him off. "Fine, I'm fine." His lips quirked in a shaky smile. "That wasn't so bad."

Radek pushed his glasses higher up his nose, "Glad to hear it," but he didn't look convinced. As John pushed himself from the chair, the Czek hovered with one hand reaching out at the ready to steady him if need be.

"I'm fine," John said, forcing himself into a careful walk with hands in his pockets toward the door. Once safely on the other side, he increased his speed into a fast walk, a trot, then a run to the nearest balcony, colliding with the rail just as he started to gag.

Nothing came up, which he would take as a good thing. He leaned with his elbows on the rail and his head in his hands, gulping in air like it was water.

She was no longer there, neither out of the corner of his eye nor in the darkness. But everything else...

-----------------------------

Four weeks back with everything running smooth and quiet – Rodney should have known better than to expect it to last. He'd been lulled into complacency, actually happy for once not to be working, basking in the time forced on him to get over everything he'd been through. Then Atlantis hiccuped and everything went to hell.

Finally, the hiccuping stopped, quicker than a blink. Rodney's fingers paused in their frantic race to keep firewalls up. The glitch program had finished attacking lesser systems and had been heading for more vital ares, such as the ZPM. With every firewall constructed and reinforced – and there had been a lot – the program tore them down like tissue paper, inching closer toward sending the ZPM into overload. Now systems were returning to normal. Rodney tapped his comm.

"About damn time, Zelenka. Dr. Ortiz finally get it through his thick head that the damn chair won't bite him?"

"Dr. Ortiz was unable to get the chair to respond. Colonel Sheppard took his place and was able to-"

Rodney started, his stomach dropping to his feet. "Wait, whoa, what? Sheppard did this? He activated the chair?"

"Yes, and was able to-"

"Is he all right? Is he puking or hyperventilating or anything?"

There was a sigh. "He's fine, Rodney. Now would you like to hear how he-"

Rodney pushed away from ZPM storage and stormed from the room. "Is he there? I want to talk to him." He wasn't mad, just startled, with the unfortunate side-effect of looking mad much to his benefit when people scurried out of his way rather than risk asking him what was going on.

"He left. And before you ask, I do not know where he went. And also before you ask, he seemed... well, he looked pale, a little shaky, but seemed otherwise well."

"Pale and shaky isn't well, Radek. You should have stopped him."

"And what good would it have done except to make him more agitated? He was walking fine, standing fine. He probably went out to get some fresh air."

"Of course," Rodney mumbled. Again, not mad, just so worried it was coming across as mad. The first three days of coming home Sheppard had spent in a coma. After the coma, it was five days of infection, delirium, and Rodney being called in every half hour, it felt like, to help calm him down. After the fever, Sheppard had crawled his way back to the real world subdued, skittish, quiet and plagued by nightmares if a nurse forgot to give him his sedatives. When John had finally been released just last week, he'd gone scarce, vanishing without warning, gone for hours at a time. And whenever someone went looking for him – Teyla, Ronon, Rodney – he could always be found on some pier or balcony.

One time, he'd even taken a 'jumper to the main land for a whopping four hours, much to everyone's consternation and Rodney's annoyance.

But thinking as a text-book claustrophobic, Rodney knew what it was really about, and couldn't really blame Sheppard. Being trapped in one box trapping him in another box, anyone would develop an incessant craving for wide open spaces.

Going anywhere near the control chair ratcheted that craving up several notches. The last time Rodney had witnessed Sheppard's attempt at interfacing with a "safe" interface, Sheppard had barely sat down in the chair and activated it when he was upright and bolting to the nearest corner where he puked endlessly.

Rodney couldn't begin to imagine what maintaining the interface might have done.

There was a balcony not far from the chair room. Rodney rushed through it, skidding to a stop on the other side and searching around frantically. He jolted on seeing Sheppard a dark, huddled mass on the floor, legs drawn up to rest his forehead on his knees and arms clasped casually around them.

Rodney inched toward him, not too fast or sudden, hoping the sound of the door whispering open had alerted John to another presence. John startled bad when taken by surprise, so bad that at one point he'd almost broken his wrist in a panicked flail. Although, at the time, he'd still had a little of that fever lingering.

Just in case, though, "Sheppard?"

Sheppard rolled his head to the side to look at Rodney. "Hey McKay." He didn't look as bad as he had when they'd finally brought him home; no longer so stick-skinny and unsteady, but still gaunt, pale... haunted. He wasn't trembling, which Rodney took as a positive sign.

Rodney eased down on the ground beside him. "So," he said, "interfaced." Not the best topic-opener but he wasn't sure if the situation was safe for quips.

"Interfaced," John said, sounding tired.

Rodney studied him more closely, thinking that John was in desperate need of a good, long nap. And food, but that was a given. "How was it?"

John shrugged. "Not as bad as I thought. Kind of felt the same at first – a little cold. That's what always... bothers me. _Had_ bothered me the last couple of attempts. Didn't this time."

Rodney nodded sagely. "Because of the crisis." He gave Sheppard a gentle nudge in the arm with his elbow. "Chaos – it may raise the blood pressure but it gets the job done," he said with a smile.

Sheppard turned his head away, toward the ocean made silver by the overcast clouds, and nodded. Neither one said anything for an awkward minute – awkward for Rodney, Sheppard didn't seem to notice. Unable to take it anymore, Rodney took a breath in preparation to convince Sheppard – subtly – to come back inside. Fresh air was all well and good, Keller had said, but the planet was heading toward it's fall, the days getting cooler, and Sheppard's body wasn't exactly resilient to much, the cold especially. As though to prove the point, a chill wind rolled over them, making Rodney shiver and Sheppard shiver harder.

"Maybe we should-"

"Think I'm a monster, McKay?" Sheppard said.

Rodney snapped his jaw shut with a click. "Um... what?"

Sheppard's eyes flickered to him. As though realizing what he'd just said, Sheppard cleared his throat, the awkwardness finally getting to him. "I mean... made some bad decisions. A lot of bad decisions."

"Haven't we all?" Rodney said. "Hello, talking to a guy who blew up a couple of planets." He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at John. "Did that computer thing say something to you?" He rolled his eyes. "Wait, what am I saying, of course it did. Of course it gave you that spiel about the greater good and maintaining existence and..."

Horror and guilt ripped through Rodney at the thought of just what Sheppard had gone through in that virtual world. Rodney had never asked. There were times, after Sheppard had woken from his coma, where he'd thought about it. But then someone else would ask – Woosely, that new shrink – Sheppard wouldn't answer except to say it hurt like hell, so Rodney never saw the point in it.

More accurately – honestly - he didn't want to know. Because when Rodney McKay wanted to know something, little in any galaxy could stop him from asking it. Cut him off, sure. Prevent the words from reaching his mouth? Not a chance.

The interface worked by temporarily taking over John's mind and body, and for some inexplicable reason that Rodney couldn't, and didn't want to, fathom, Sheppard had to temporarily _die_ for synchronization to be reached. The Colonel's heart stopped just to turn him into a glorified gun slinger, which was the only purpose of the interface – to make the weapon aim and hit the right target. All those stupid wires and tubes, just to friggin' _aim_.

But obviously there would have been more than just being killed over and over again. That machine had been smart, tainted, and desperate to live. Obviously, it and Sheppard had had a few heart to hearts.

Rodney couldn't imagine... didn't want to imagine what that might have been like. He had enough of an idea from the hours spent trying to get a screaming Sheppard caught in the grip of animal panic to calm down. He'd never seen Sheppard that terrified before, _ever_.

He never wanted to see him or anyone that terrified again.

"It was a machine, Sheppard. Just a machine," Rodney said.

"A machine with good debate skills," said Sheppard.

Rodney shook his head. "No, a machine trying to manipulate you the only way it knew how, by being all logical and calculating and holier-than-thou." He scooted around until he was facing Sheppard – well, Sheppard's side – directly. "Look, there've been a lot of bad, unsavory, questionable decisions made that, at the time they were made, probably sounded good on paper or were the only choice we had to make. And I'm pretty sure some of those choices – okay, maybe all of them - though unsavory, we'd make again and some we'd try to do differently. But.. but... that doesn't make us monsters. It just makes us human."

Which sounded lame and completely unhelpful even to him. Just hearing it out loud made Rodney want to say something condescending to himself, reminding him that "hey, wasn't it you who theorized about Mr. Logical Machine being tainted by human emotions?"

Rodney slumped back against the wall with a sharp, annoyed sigh. He hated this. He sucked at saying the right words, always had and he wasn't about to deny it. But even that didn't stop the need for him to say _something_, anything. Bad decisions doth not a monster make, and Sheppard didn't deserve whatever guilt that _thing_ had made him wallow in for the sake of itself. He deserved some friggin' peace of mind, the means to sleep without a sedative, and finding just as much solitude within Atlantis as without before...

Before it led to packing up, heading out, and giving them all a good reason to panic. Sheppard was strong, but he had his breaking points, just like every other regular human in any galaxy. Just like tainted machines.

"You're not a monster," Rodney said with conviction, sadly tempered by how equally lame he knew it sounded.

But at least he finally figured out the right words to get Sheppard back inside, hopefully. "You hungry? I'm hungry. Saving Atlantis always works up a good appetite and it's almost dinner time."

Sheppard shrugged. "Sure."

"Good, 'cause there's cake. Good way to celebrate conquering phobias." Rodney stood and held out a hand for Sheppard.

Sheppard took it, Rodney hauled him to his feet, holding him by the shoulder as the pilot steadied himself. Spending a month in a virtual world also wreaked havoc on equilibrium.

The need to say something continued poking and prodding at Rodney as they moved toward the door. Sheppard was looking a little pathetic, hunched as he was. It made him seem small, timid. Rodney didn't like seeing it, hated that a stupid, broken machine was the reason for it and hated that Sheppard had a guilt streak a hundred miles wide for a stupid machine to take advantage of.

Without thinking about it, Rodney said, "Sheppard? John?"

Sheppard, standing just within the door, turned to him.

"You're a good man," Rodney said. He cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably. "Because, um... the decisions you've made? They've always been about everyone else. Never you. Everything you do, it's always for someone else and..." he cleared his throat again, "and if that isn't what makes someone good, then I don't know what does." He bobbed his head. "Yeah."

Awkwardness returned, surrounding them thick and stifling as cotton. Sheppard looked away, down at the floor with a quick swipe of his hand across his mouth, looking ready argue. Rodney prepped himself to argue back.

Then Sheppard lifted his head, and the look on his face was the most open and sincere Rodney had ever seen.

"Thanks McKay."

And then, just as quick, he looked away and it was gone.

Rodney bobbed his head again. It hadn't exactly been epiphany-worthy insight that would put the world to right, but it had been better than nothing, and Rodney no longer felt like kicking himself. Neither was Sheppard's shoulders quite so slumped.

"You're welcome," he said. It took a few minutes to remember the reason they'd been heading inside, other than to get Sheppard out of the cold. He clapped his hands together and rubbed. "So... Mess hall? Before the cake's gone?"

"Right," John said, and smiled.

Rodney clapped him on the shoulder, and together they walked back inside.

The End

_The beings of the mind are not of clay;_

_Essentially immortal, they create_

_And multiply in us a brighter ray_

_And more beloved existence._

- Byron


End file.
